"Purrt" <ivaf.DeleteThis@ptd.net> wrote:
> Info on the latest atomic clock research:
<font color=purple> > <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/23jan_entangled.htm?list923615</font" target="_blank">http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/23jan_entangled.htm?list923615</font</a>>
This truly drives me up the wall.
Take two chess pieces, one black and one white. Put one in
a box and mail it to New York. Put the other in a box and
mail it to Moscow. If the recipient in New York knows this
fact, and he receives a black chess piece, he knows
perfectly well that the Moscow recipient has received a
white chess piece. The same is true for the Moscow
recipient.
There's nothing unusual about this. It only looks bizarre
when applied to (say) a pair of photons resulting from
pi-zero decay.
Two entangled particles often must have opposite values
for a property -- for example, if one is spinning in
"up" direction, the other must be spinning in the "down"
direction. Suppose you measure one of the entangled
particles and, by doing so, you nudge it "up." This
causes the entangled partner to spin "down." Making the
measurement "here" affected the other particle "over
there" instantaneously, even if the other particle was a
million miles away.
Or even if the other particle was detected half a year
earlier. So your measurement of your particle affected the
earlier measurement --- or did the earlier measurement
affect yours? Or does it matter?
The answer, of course, is that it doesn't matter. You only
measured the particle. You didn't decide upon its value.
You neither sent nor received any information. It's only
afterwards that you and the other person can compare notes
and verify the correlation.
I believe that part of the problem is a fundamental miss-
understanding in quantum theory. People talk about the
state (or wave function) of the particle, when they should
be talking about the wave function of the universe. In a
two-particle system, one talks about the state or wave
function of the two particles. In a five-particle system,
one talks about the wave function of the five particles. In
a ten-to-the-twenty-third-power system, one talks about the
wave function or state of the ten-to-the-twenty-third-power
particles.
It doesn't matter whether those ten-to-the-twenty-third-
power particles are arranged in a laser, lens, computer,
eye-ball, brain, or other detecting device. You still talk
about the wave function or state of the universe. In the
case of measuring entangled particles described above, the
universe is in a superposition of the following two states:
"you read UP and other reads DOWN" and "you read DOWN and
other reads UP."
There is no possibility for "you read UP and other reads UP"
or "you read DOWN and other reads DOWN." And there is also
no possibility for the state "you read that you are in a
superposition of UP and DOWN."
-- John Morrison<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
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