Coulombo's law demands that every chili dish requires a hot, spicy gravytation...
Posted on 09/29/2018 10:23:05 AM PDT by ETL
Entanglement is one of the most confusing aspects of quantum mechanics — a field of physics that isn't exactly known to be clear-cut, sensible, common-sense and easy-to-understand.
Even Albert Einstein himself was flummoxed by the surprising behavior of microscopic particles, and he firmly believed that we were fundamentally misunderstanding the universe with quantum mechanics. It turns out that Einstein was wrong, but it's going to take a while to explain where he went wrong and what's really going on in the quantum realm.
One of the most important lessons from quantum mechanics is that we have to completely rewrite our conception of a "particle." Instead of picturing a hard, solid, precise point in space and time, scientists now see a particle as a cloud of fuzzy probabilities, with those probabilities describing where we might find the particle when we look for it. But until we perform a measurement, we can't exactly know everything we'd like to know about the particle.
And those fuzzy probabilities apply to more than just the position of a particle. A lot of fuzziness also attaches to a particle's speed, angular momentum, spin and so on. If it's something we're interested in measuring, chances are we don't know what we're going to get in advance.
These fuzzy probabilities are known as quantum states. They're neat mathematical equations that summarize all the probabilities of the particle property we want to probe. That's all well and good — if horrendously mind-bending — but the real fun begins when we get two particles to share a quantum state. In certain circumstances, we can connect two particles in a quantum way, so that a single mathematical equation describes both sets of probabilities simultaneously.
At first, that sounds innocent enough and probably like something only academics would care about, but something funny pops up with this so-called "entangled" state of two particles. Let's look at an extremely simple, but surprisingly realistic, example.
We'll prepare our superspecial entangled quantum state so that there are two and only two possible outcomes, each with a perfect 50/50 chance of appearing when we make the measurement. In the first outcome, one particle has a spin pointing up (if you don't know what "spin" means here, don't worry, that's the subject of another article and doesn't really matter for this example). The other particle has spin pointing down. In the second possible outcome, the spins are flipped.
So far, so good. We prepare our entangled quantum state, send our particles off on their merry ways and begin to make our measurement.
Taking a peek at the first particle, we find a spin pointing up. It could've been down just as easily, but this is like flipping a coin, and we just happened to catch an up-spin particle. What does this tell us about the second particle? Because we carefully arranged our entangled quantum state, we now know with 100 percent certainty that the second particle must be pointing down. Its quantum state was entangled with that of the first particle, and as soon as one revelation is made, both revelations are made.
Here's where Einstein interrupts everything. What if the second particle is on the other side of the room? Or across the galaxy? According to quantum theory, as soon as one "choice" is made, the partner particle instantly "knows" what spin to be. It appears that communication can be achieved at faster-than-light speeds, which Einstein thought we had all agreed was impossible.
To Einstein, the fault was obviously with quantum mechanics. In a snappy 1935 paper written with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, he used a similar line of thinking to point out that the newfangled quantum theory wasn't consistent with itself — the ultimate slap in the face to any self-respecting theory of nature. He argued that quantum mechanics fell short of being a full description of the subatomic world and that particles carried with them so-called hidden variables that enabled them to coordinate their states prior to being measured.
But sophisticated tests in the intervening decades have conclusively shown, time and again, that no such hidden variables exist. These tests have also shown that this "spooky action at a distance" (as Einstein called this mysterious quantum backchannel communication system that entangled particles seem to employ) does indeed happen in an instant. It does so even when we've sent the entangled particles as far apart as we possibly can.
But physicists still go around talking about how important the speed of light is and how nothing can violate that sacred limit. Haven't we noticed this apparent contradiction?
The resolution to Einstein's question comes via an excruciatingly careful examination of who knows what and when. Let's say I keep one of the entangled pair of particles and send the other off to you. Eager as always, I look at my particle — performing the all-important measurement — and find an up-spin particle. Smiling with confident knowledge, I send off a beam of light telling you what you'll find.
But before the signal arrives, you look at your particle, dutifully measuring the quantum-mandated down-spin particle. But because my message hasn't arrived yet, you don't know if you were the first to look and just randomly got a down-spin or if I opened first and forced your particle into that state. It's only after we compare notes that we discover that the two particles were truly entangled and that the measurement of one depended on the other. Before that communication, we cannot tell if either of us was dealing with an already-set particle.
So, while the process of disentanglement happens instantaneously, the revelation of it does not. We have to use good old-fashioned no-faster-than-light communication methods to piece together the correlations that quantum entanglement demands. Thus, Einstein's universal speed limit is preserved, and so is the fundamentally quantum worldview.
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Paul Sutter is an astrophysicist at The Ohio State University and the chief scientist at COSI science center. Sutter is also host of "Ask a Spaceman" and "Space Radio," and he leads AstroTours around the world. Sutter contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
That is, it is the nonlocal interaction of objects that are separated in space.
This term was used most often in the context of early theories of gravity and electromagnetism to describe how an object responds to the influence of distant objects.
For example, Coulomb’s law and the law of universal gravitation are such early theories.
More generally “action at a distance” describes the failure of early atomistic and mechanistic theories which sought to reduce all physical interaction to collision.
The exploration and resolution of this problematic phenomenon led to significant developments in physics, from the concept of a field, to descriptions of quantum entanglement and the mediator particles of the Standard Model.[1]
Looking at it from an engineering-empirical point of view, it is indeed faster than light, because for communication or computing purposes there is no need to verify anything at light-speed.
If you could travel faster than light then headlights would be useless.......
To analogize with the 19th century telegraph, there is no need to verify the accuracy of the telegraph message by also sending a paper copy by Pony Express.
In theoretical physics, quantum nonlocality most commonly refers to the phenomenon by which measurements made at a microscopic level contradict a collection of notions known as local realism that are regarded as intuitively true in classical mechanics.
However, some quantum mechanical predictions of multi-system measurement statistics on entangled quantum states cannot be simulated by any local hidden variable theory. An explicit example is demonstrated by Bell’s theorem, which has been verified by experiment.[1]
Experiments have generally favoured quantum mechanics as a description of nature, over local hidden variable theories.[2][3] Any physical theory that supersedes or replaces quantum theory must make similar experimental predictions and must therefore also be nonlocal in this sense; quantum nonlocality is a property of the universe that is independent of our description of nature.
Quantum nonlocality does not allow for faster-than-light communication,[4] and hence is compatible with special relativity. However, it prompts many of the foundational discussions concerning quantum theory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_nonlocality
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The Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox or the EPR paradox[1] of 1935 is a thought experiment in quantum mechanics with which Albert Einstein and his colleagues Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen (EPR) claimed to demonstrate that the wave function does not provide a complete description of physical reality, and hence that the Copenhagen interpretation is unsatisfactory; resolutions of the paradox have important implications for the interpretation of quantum mechanics.
The work was based at The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton University in 1934, which Einstein joined after he fled Nazi Europe.
Albert Einstein
The essence of the paradox is that particles can interact in such a way that it is possible to measure both their position and their momentum more accurately than Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle allows, unless measuring one particle instantaneously affects the other to prevent this accuracy, which would involve information being transmitted faster than light as forbidden by the theory of relativity (”spooky action at a distance”).
This consequence had not previously been noticed and seemed unreasonable at the time; the phenomenon involved is now known as quantum entanglement.
Per EPR, the paradox demonstrated that quantum theory was incomplete, and needed to be extended with hidden variables. One modern resolution is as follows: for two “entangled” particles created at once (e.g. an electron-positron pair from a photon), measurable properties have well-defined meaning only for the ensemble system.
Properties of constituent subsystems (e.g. the individual electron or positron), considered individually, remain undefined. Therefore, if analogous measurements are performed on the two entangled subsystems, there will always be a correlation between the outcomes, and a well-defined global outcome for the ensemble.
However, the outcomes for each subsystem, considered separately, at each repetition of the experiment, will not be well defined or predictable. This correlation does not imply that measurements performed on one particle influence measurements on the other. This modern resolution eliminates the need for hidden variables, action at a distance, or other schemes introduced over time, in order to explain the phenomenon.
According to quantum mechanics, under some conditions, a pair of quantum systems may be described by a single wave function, which encodes the probabilities of the outcomes of experiments that may be performed on the two systems, whether jointly or individually.
At the time the EPR article discussed below was written, it was known from experiments that the outcome of an experiment sometimes cannot be uniquely predicted. An example of such indeterminacy can be seen when a beam of light is incident on a half-silvered mirror. One half of the beam will reflect, and the other will pass.
If the intensity of the beam is reduced until only one photon is in transit at any time, whether that photon will reflect or transmit cannot be predicted quantum mechanically.
The routine explanation of this effect was, at that time, provided by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Physical quantities come in pairs called conjugate quantities.
Examples of such conjugate pairs are (Position, momentum), (Time, energy), and (Angular position, angular momentum). When one quantity was measured, and became determined, the conjugated quantity became indeterminate. Heisenberg explained this uncertainty as due to the quantization of the disturbance from measurement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox
Coulombo's law demands that every chili dish requires a hot, spicy gravytation...
For some years I have wished that I had known about Quantum Physics at a young age. When I finally discovered it, I was already involved in Theology. I still lament my ability to know the math of it, but the theory of it is so fascinating. I love reading all the Quantum theories and feel some sense of understanding it. It is the closest we have come to proving that God is one thing, not many. Existence as we see it is all one thing. I can almost understand it. Too old now, but I would have been a happy “hunter” if I had been aware of a science that really could explain things.
Here’s a scientist I strongly recommend you hear speak...
Lothar Schafer
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=lothar+schafer
“Particle” was just the most likely metaphor to use to describe what can’t be seen, and will never be seen, whatever the hell it is.
PS. Schrodinger’s imaginary “cat” is either alive or not alive. There is no middle ground between a statement and its negation.
"In the context of encounters of Science and Religion, "In Search of Divine Reality" proposes that the traditional conflict between the two disciplines is mainly one involving classical, Newtonian Science; and many of its most pressing issues have obtained an entirely different meaning by the change in world view effected by the discovery of Quantum Mechanics. In Classical Physics, there is no room for the Spiritual and for God. In the world of Quantum Mechanics, the foundations of physical reality have revealed all the aspects of a transcendent reality; with non-material entities at the basis of material things; with components of ordinary things that are not as real as the things that they make; with instantaneous, long-distance (non-local) connections pervading the universe; and with elementary entities that have mind-like properties.
Thus, in the same way in which dead atoms can form living organisms and stupid molecules can form intelligent brains, the metaphysical can engender the physical.
Without the employment of advanced mathematics, the book uses the phenomena of Quantum Reality to provide a clear and generally understandable description of the concepts of Quantum Mechanics and its consequences for our views of human nature."
http://comp.uark.edu/~schafer/
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On the Foundations of Metaphysics in the
Mind-like Background of Physical Reality
by Lothar Schäfer
That the basis of the material world is non-material is a transcription of the fact that the properties of things are determined by quantum waves, - probability amplitudes which carry numerical relations, but are devoid of mass and energy. As a consequence of the wave-like aspects of reality, atoms do not have any shape - a solid outline in space - but the things do, which they form; and the constituents of matter, the elementary particles, are not in the same sense real as the real things that they constitute.
Rather, left to themselves they exist in a world of possibilities, “between the idea of a thing and a real thing”, as Heisenberg wrote, in superpositions of quantum states, in which a definite place in space, for example, is not an intrinsic attribute. That is, when such a particle is not observed it is, in particular, nowhere.
In the quantum phenomena we have discovered that reality is different than we thought. Visible order and permanence are based on chaos and transitory entities. Mental principles - numerical relations, mathematical forms, principles of symmetry - are the foundations of order in the universe, whose mind-like properties are further established by the fact that changes in information can act, without any direct physical intervention, as causal agents in observable changes in quantum states. Prior to the discovery of these phenomena information-driven reactions were a prerogative of mind. “The universe”, Eddington wrote, “is of the nature of a thought. The stuff of the world is mind-stuff”.
Mind-stuff, in a part of reality behind the mechanistic foreground of the world of space-time energy sensibility, as Sherrington called it, is not restricted to Einstein locality. The existence of non-local physical effects - faster than light phenomena - has now been well established by quantum coherence-type experiments like those related to Bell’s Theorem. If the universe is non-local, something that happens at this moment in its depths may have an instantaneous effect a long distance away, for example right here and right now. By every molecule in our body we are tuned to the mind-stuff of the universe.
In this way the quantum phenomena have forced the opening of a universe that Newton’s mechanism once blinded and closed. Unintended by its creator, Newton’s mechanics defined a machine, without any life or room for human values, the Parmenidian One, forever unchanging and predictable, “eternal matter ruled by eternal laws”, as Sheldrake wrote. In contrast, the quantum phenomena have revealed that the world of mechanism is just the cortex of a deeper and wider, transcendent, reality. The future of the universe is open, because it is unpredictable. Its present is open, because it is subject to non-local influences that are beyond our control. Cracks have formed in the solidity of the material world from which emanations of a different type of reality seep in. In the diffraction experiments of material particles, a window has opened to the world of Platonic ideas.
That the universe should be mind-like and not communicate with the human mind - the one organ to which it is akin - is not very likely. In fact, one of the most fascinating faculties of the human mind is its ability to be inspired by unknown sources - as though it were sensitive to signals of a mysterious origin. It is at this point that the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. Ever since the discovery of Hume’s paradox - the principles that we use to establish scientific knowledge cannot establish themselves - science has had an illegitimate basis. Hume was right: in every external event we observe conjunction, but infer connection. Thus, causality is not a principle of nature but a habit of the human mind. At the same time, Hume was not right in postulating that there is no single experience of causality. Because, when the self-conscious mind itself is directly involved in a causal link, for example when its associated body takes part in a collision, or when the mind by its own free will is the cause of some action, then there is a direct experience of, and no doubt that, causal connections exist. When this modification of the paradox is coupled with the quantum base, a large number of pressing problems find their delightful solutions.
Like the nature of reality, the nature of knowledge is counter-intuitive, and not at all like the automatic confidence that we have in sensations of this phenomenon. The basis of knowledge is threefold. The premises are experience of reality, employment of reason, and reliance on certain non-rational, non-empirical principles, such as the Assumptions of identity, factuality, permanence, Causality, and induction. Where do these principles come from? Neither from an experience of external phenomena, nor from a process of reasoning, but from a system program of the self-conscious mind. By being an extension of the mind-like background of nature and partaking of its order, mind gives the epistemic principles - those used in deriving knowledge - certainty. Since they are not anchored in the world of space-time and mass-energy but are valid nevertheless, they seem to derive from a higher order and transcendent part of physical reality. They are, it can be assumed, messengers of the mind-like order of reality.
In the same way, moral principles. Traditional societies based their social order on myths and religious explanations. By assuming a purpose in the world, they told people why things are the way they are, and why they should act the way they were supposed to act. In the “animist ontogenies” values and knowledge derived from a single source, and life had meaning in an “animist covenant” as Monod called it. By destroying the ontological base of the animist explanations, - their astronomy, physics, and chemistry, - science also destroyed the foundations of their values.
In this process Monod saw the origin of the contemporary sickness in culture, das Unbehagen in der Kultur: on the one hand science is the basis for our power and survival; on the other, it has broken the animist covenant, rendered life meaningless in the process, and disconnected the world of values from the world of facts.
The sickness of spirit and the concomitant erosion of moral standards are the great danger for the future of mankind, already apparent in the public adoration of violence and debased behavior. At its roots is the unsolved question, on whose authority are the moral principles to be based now that the authority of the animist myths has been found lacking?
For those who are willing to listen, the answer is: on the authority of mind. In the same way that the self-conscious mind grants certainty to the epistemic principles, it invests authority in the moral principles. Like the former, the moral principles are non-empirical and non-rational, - not derived by a process of logic nor verified by experience - messengers from a higher reality beyond the front of mass-energy sensibility.
Epistemic principles give us a sense of what is true and false; moral principles, of what is right and wrong. The former establish the certainty of identity, permanence, factuality, causality; the latter, of responsibility, morality, honesty. By the same process that allows us to accept, without possible verification, the epistemic principles, we can also accept the authority of the moral principles. Violation of any one of them will put us in contrast to the nature of reality. If the nature of the universe is mind-like, it must be assumed to have a spiritual order as well as a physical order. As the epistemic principles are expressions of physical order, the ethical principles are expressions of the spiritual order of physical reality. By being an extension of the transcendent part of the nature and partaking of its order, mind establishes the authority of the ethical principles.
The challenge of reality and the ability to explore it are wonderful gifts to mankind. Understanding reality requires refinement of thought. That is, it has to do with culture. It requires an effort, is not afforded by automatic, intuitive reflex. Making sense of the world takes the response to a challenge, not the complacency of common sense. It is one and the same as striving for the moral life. An important part of it is the need to become aware of the specific character of human nature, to recognize “the human mystery” as Eccles called it: the mystery of how mind and body interact, how self-conscious human beings with values emerged in an evolutionary process supposedly based on blind chance and brutality. The evidence is growing that there is more to human nature than the laws of physics or chemistry, more to the process of evolution than blind chance and brutality; that evolution is more than, as Monod wrote, “a giant lottery, and human beings live at the boundary of an alien world that is deaf to our music and indifferent to our hopes and suffering and crimes”.
The barbaric view of reality is mechanistic. It is the easy view of classical science and of common sense. In epistemology mechanism is naive realism, the view that all knowledge is based on unquestionable facts, on apodictically verified truths. In physics mechanism is the view that the universe is clockwork, closed, and entirely predictable on the basis of unchanging laws. In biology, mechanism is the view that all aspects of life, its evolution, our feelings and values, are ultimately explicable in terms of the laws of physics and chemistry. In our legal system, mechanism is the view that the assumption of precise procedural technicalities constitutes perfect justice. In our political system, mechanism is the view that the assertion of finely formulated personal rights constitutes the ideal democracy. In our public administration, it is the view that responsible service manifests itself by the enforcement of finely split bureaucratic regulations. All of these attitudes are the attitudes of barbarians.
The quantum phenomena have taught us that, without naive realism, knowledge is possible. They have taught us that, without naive animism an ethic of knowledge, as Monod has called it, and a life with values are possible. Principles exist which are valid even though they cannot be verified. The discovery of the quantum phenomena has established a new covenant - between the human mind and the mind-like background of the universe - one that provides a home again to the homeless and meaning to the meaningless life. Whether or not the human mind is separate of the brain, as Sherrington and Eccles thought, I do not know. But I do not doubt that it is human only in some parts, and in others shares in the mind-like background of the universe. It is now possible to believe that the mind is the realization of universal potentia, a manifestation of the essence of the universe. Therefore, the only good life is in harmony with the nature of reality.
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Lothar Schäfer is the author of the book, In Search of Divine Reality - Science as a Source of Inspiration, . The book is, in essence, a brilliant description of the encounter of Science and Religion, wherein Schäfer proposes “that the traditional conflict between the two disciplines is mainly one involving classical, Newtonian Science; and many of its most pressing issues have obtained an entirely different meaning by the change in world view effected by the discovery of Quantum Mechanics.”
Lothar Schäfer is the Edgar Wertheim Distinguished Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. He received his Ph.D. (in Chemistry) from the University of Munich in 1965, and is the recipient of numerous awards for his scientific work. His current research interests include topics in Applied Quantum Chemistry and Molecular Structural Studies by Electron Diffraction.
In a review of Schäfer’s book, Professor Quentin Smith, Department of Philosophy, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, writes:
“Schäfer’s book is an integrative approach to Modern Science and Religion that aims to show how some traditional religious and philosophical notions can be understood or redefined in terms of modern science. The scientific explanations are reliable and the scientific interpretations of religious ideas are interesting and should be taken seriously and respectfully by even the most sober-minded adherents of the scientific world-view. Rather than science being opposed or subordinated to religion, religious views are refashioned in terms of currently accepted scientific theories. Most of the arguments of the book are based on conclusions drawn from the phenomena of quantum reality and it is one of the clearest introductory explanations of quantum mechanics on the market. Schäfer’s book is written in a lively and accessible style that will appeal to the general reader. I really enjoyed reading this book.”
Schrodinger’s imaginary “cat” is either alive or not alive.
But glue a piece of buttered toast to its back and
throw it up in the air and see what happens...
I have had a different reaction. I was both a scientific nerd and a theological nerd from age five.
I started out as an engineering/biology double major, but eventually focused on church service.
Although I am certainly not expert in QM, I had multiple awards in both the hard sciences and mathematics, and excelled in physics. At the same time as I was garnering awards in those, ages sixteen through nineteen, I also was selected by several theologians for special mentoring.
I ultimately saw a parallel failing between science and religion: Mistaking the Model for the Real.
A scale model of a P-51, no matter how accurately detailed (and even if 1:1!) is not the same as a real one. And a poorly detailed, small-scale one does not cease to be a model of one.
Does Orbital Theory make Bohr’s Atom useless? No. Does Quantum Mechanics make Orbital Theory useless? No. I would not try to teach a child from scratch using QM; I would use Bohr’s conception, move up to SPDF, and so on.
No mathematical equation, or sets of equations, is the same as the real thing: the Universe or God. Likewise, no set of theological ruminations encompasses the truth of God and his Word. Science does not produce Truth - nor does theology.
These things have their value in their various levels of usefulness, but they are not true or false in an absolute sense; they are instead more or less accurate, in comparison to Reality - or God.
Though I am Christian, I resort to a quotation I once heard by a rabbi:
“I am not very interested in what Man has to say about God [Theology]; I am much more interested in what God has to say about Man [The Word].” Daniel Lapin (Bracketed additions are mine.)
I do not begrudge others their continuing fascination with such things, I am just saying that this conflation - or worse, replacement - of the Real with the Model has gradually lessened my interest in both theoretical physics and dogmatic theology.
Agree with you that no model is the real thing. My first interest in Theology came from an encounter with Spirit. It first happened when I was 7, and also in my 50s. Between those times I read like a starving castaway, while being a wife and mother of 4 children. When the kids were all gone their way, at the ate of 52 I returned to college and complete a degree in a joint major of Religion/Sociology & a minor in Communication. I won awards for both Religion and Greek. I then was accepted at the Union Theological Seminary in Richmond and completed my M.Div.with awards in Hebrew and Rural Ministry. Since then my life has been completely dedicated to my “church” ministry, having pastored 7 different churches during 27 years. My intellect has been occupied with the Word and my life living in the guidance of the Spirit.
That being said, I still love the mental exercise that comes with Metaphysical being. Quatum is an interesting study that I have no scientific background to understand, but I try for the fun of it. I made an A in Physics in college even though my brain has never been able to wrap around math. But there is a big gap between Physics and Quantum Physics. I just take what I can gain from the study of it.
Thanks for your interest.
Nan
Note: this topic is from . Thanks ETL.
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