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I still think the answer will have to confront the problem of local realism. It was the issue that drove Newton nuts (that gravitation was, in Einstein's langu

I still think the answer will have to confront the problem of local realism. It was the issue that drove Newton nuts (that gravitation was, in Einstein's language "spooky action at a distance"), and Einstein resolved that through Relativity, which redefined how we think about "distance". Now the lack of local realism in QM is driving Einstein's ghost nuts. I think the resolution of all this will again redefine "distance" to take resolutions involving quantum entanglement into account. Vaguely I picture some quantum relativity theory where from the perspective of an entangled particle it's still d=0 from its entangled partner and everything else is splitting apart. So like relativity, it's all about which perspective you take. Then perhaps with these relative distances, and however the math falls out with some kind of quantum Lorentz transforms maybe we see that in galaxies with lots of entangled particles this can slow down rotation. That said, dark matter is entirely possible too. There's no particular reason to think that all particles need to have an EM effect as well. In fact it's somewhat crazy to think they should. Why wouldn't there be particles that only show themselves gravitationally? Or through other perhaps insanely strong forces that for whatever evolutionary reason Earth Life is just not evolved to care about or see even indirectly. That said, I have no training in physics and this is entirely crackpot concept. (Of http://www.goodtheorist.science/ http://www.goodtheorist.science/ I've only read ~6.)

cobbzilla 9y ago
Your idea reminds me of Wheeler's "single electron universe" [1]. I think you're on to something but I also think the next big step will involve a formal (re)definition of time as well as distance. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dbasedweeb 9y ago
  When you think about particles as excitations of a field, the indistinguishable nature of said particles stops being such a puzzle.
  - daxfohl 9y ago
    But the concept of a field itself was troubling to 18-19th century physicists. "So you put this (mass/charge/entanglement/whatever) here and automagically there's this whole force that extends across the universe in zero time? How? Why?" Philosophically I don't know if this question has ever been answered satisfactorily. But over the last 100 years fields have become so mathematically convenient that they're too hard not to use.
    - dbasedweeb 9y ago
      Well those 18th-19th century anything didn’t have a concept of entanglement or FTL, they were struggling with the notion that light, gravity, and other forces could propagate without a medium. They saw that waves could be transmitted through water, sound through air, and the idea that light or gravity could be transmitted through vacuum was baffling. Their resolution to the issue was to propose the existence of a substance which was invisible, intangible, but which permeated everything: the luminiferous ether. Light, in their understanding, wasn’t really moving through a vacuum, but this ever-present “stuff” instead. That started to fall out of favor long after the 18th century, and was finally conclusively shot down by Michelson and Morley with their interferometry. The problem Einstein and others grappled with was different, and concerned the fact that according to relativity nothing should exceed c. Entangled particles seemed to violate that principle, because the collapse to a given pair of states was instantaneous. The modern resolution to that is more practical than philosophical, and points out that information isn’t transmitted faster than light in entangled particles. Information propagates at or below c, even though at some scale entangled particles are statistically correlated. Relativity is only violated, and causality threatened if information is transmitted FTL, but entanglement doesn’t allow for that. You need a classical channel make entanglement work for communication, and that classical channel is going to be no faster than light. Without a classical channel, entanglement just gives you random noise.
      - goatlover 9y ago
        > Relativity is only violated, and causality threatened if information is transmitted FTL, but entanglement doesn’t allow for that. You need a classical channel make entanglement work for communication, and that classical channel is going to be no faster than light. Without a classical channel, entanglement just gives you random noise. But none of that answers the 18th-19th century Physicists question about how fields extend across the universe, or how light propagates in empty space. What the hell is a field anyway? Also, it doesn't explain how the expansion of space happens, what made inflation happen, and what dark energy is.
- daxfohl 9y ago
  Well if someone ever bothers to go through all the math this thing would entail, I think this would eventually come to some physically testable experiment. Whereas Wheeler's thing seems more pie in the sky.
- bdamm 9y ago
  Indeed, we seem to treat time like a passive component, a constantly ticking clock, where I wonder if time is distance, and it's time that's expanding our apparent distance. We measure distance in terms of time, or in terms of energy required to cross a given distance in a given time, and I can't shake the idea that energy required is exactly time, and distance itself is the meaningless measurement. It's energy required in 3D that's expanding. That doesn't mean space is expanding, only that energy required in 3D is expanding. And, obviously, I'm not a physicist. If I ever get a second chance at school, maybe physics.
coldtea 9y ago
>It was the issue that drove Newton nuts (that gravitation was, in Einstein's language "spooky action at a distance") Was Newton ever much concerned about this? He was into alchemy and magic, even spookier actions at a distance. Plus, by all they knew at the time, why would "action at a distance" feel strange?
- daxfohl 9y ago
  See Newton's quote here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_locality https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_locality
  - DmenshunlAnlsis 9y ago
    This has very little to do with the modern issue of action at a distance vis a vis entanglement, and everything to do with the prevailing belief in an aether during Newton’s time. Einstein meanwhile, was actually commenting on entanglement physics.
    - daxfohl 9y ago
      Yeah I'm not trying to imply they're the same physical cause, just the same philosophical perception of ickiness. How to phrase better? Newton had issues with aether messing philosophically with local realism. Einstein fixed that through SR and then GR. But then QM introduced new problems with local realism, and maybe the next physics revolution is reconciling that problem. So, not the same thing, but perhaps two different sides of the same million-sided armchair-philosophical dice.
    - antonvs 9y ago
      But Einstein's objection was almost identical to Newton's. Newton wrote, "It is inconceivable that inanimate Matter should, without the Mediation of something else, which is not material, operate upon, and affect other matter without mutual Contact." Einstein wrote, "I cannot seriously believe in it because the theory cannot be reconciled with the idea that physics should represent a reality in time and space, free from spooky actions at a distance." Newton was talking about gravity, Einstein about entanglement. But the objection is essentially the same one. That's the reason that Newton's quote above is included in an article on the principle of locality.
kowdermeister 9y ago
> that gravitation was, in Einstein's language "spooky action at a distance" You are mistaking gravitation for quantum entanglement which Einstein used to describe as spooky action at a distance.
- daxfohl 9y ago
  No, that was intentional. They were both concerned with the lack of local realism delineated in the physics of their time, each of which occurred for different reasons (and the latter of which we still live with). Einstein just had a more memorable phrase for it. I can see how that was misleading though.
  - jessriedel 9y ago
    The way you've written it is very misleading. > that gravitation was, in Einstein's language "spooky action at a distance" This definitely suggests you're claiming that Einstein was talking about gravity, regardless of the literal interpretation.
    - daxfohl 9y ago
      :%s/"in Einstein's language"/"as Einstein may have phrased it"/g
  - DmenshunlAnlsis 9y ago
    The problem is that locality, realism and “spukhafte fernwirking” are all issues of quantum mechanics and not relativistic physics. You weren’t misleading, you were mistaken.
    - daxfohl 9y ago
      But in the 1800s they were issues of Newton's theory of gravitation.
renox 9y ago
With a true 'd = 0' for entangled particuls you could have faster than light communication no? But entanglement as far as we know now doesn't allow FTL communications.
- daxfohl 9y ago
  Kinda the opposite. If you redefine what "distance" means, that's explicitly how you's avoid FTL communication and eliminate the EPR paradox. Again though, I really am not an expert, or even more than armchair knowledgeable, on the subject.
- jcoffland 9y ago
  On their own, entangled particles do not allow information to be communicated.
  - Flow 9y ago
    “Information to be communicated” or “information to be communicated faster than light” ?
    - jcoffland 9y ago
      neither
nol13 9y ago
Entangled particles just share the same ref, distance is a function of lookup complexity. This makes sense right? right?!?
gus_massa 9y ago
> I think the resolution of all this will again redefine "distance" to take resolutions involving quantum entanglement into account. Vaguely I picture some quantum relativity theory where from the perspective of an entangled particle it's still d=0 from its entangled partner and everything else is splitting apart. The problem with this idea is that entanglement is everywhere. The electrons inside a molecule can't be described individually, you must use the superposition of anisometric combinations of them, because only one combination is not enough. It's usually not called entanglement, but mathematically is the same phenomena. Every time two particles collide they get entangled. If they somehow collide or they split and the new particles collide you can see the entanglement as interference. If they go far away, it's difficult to measure the correlation, but it still there. Again, it's usually not called entanglement, but mathematically is the same phenomena. You have probably only read about cases where it's easy to characterize and isolate the superposition state of two particles that are far away. It's an interesting case because you can make some measurements and see that the classic description is wrong and prove that you must use the quantum description of the particles. But if you make any two particles, they will be entangled, just in a non easy to guess form, so they are not nice for experiments. Or if some of them collide with a third particle now you must consider the join state of the tree particles that is more difficult (there are some nice theoretical entanglement results with three particles, but I think nobody had measure them yet). If you see only two of the three entangled particles now the lack of some part of the information makes the result less clear, because you always must repeat the experiment many times and now you must take a weighted average of the possible states of the third particle you are not seeing. So if you are lucky you will see a smaller quantum effect, but if the state of the third particle is important enough you will see an average that is essentially equal to the classic result. And if they collide with more particles they all get in a superposition state that is equivalent of an entangled state, but it's very difficult od impossible to control it in an experiment. So when you see some part of them they look like a usual classical system. So after a few collisions all the particles are somewhat entangled, it's uncontrollable but mathematically there is no sharp criteria to distinguish the controllable states that are nice for entanglement experiments and the uncontrollable states where the decoherence make they look as classic system and everything in between. So if you say that two entangled particles have a distance d=0 then all the particles in the universe have d=0.
dmfdmf 9y ago
I agree. I think people miss your point that within their respective contexts Newton and Einstein were rejecting a form of an acausal theory. However, there is a significant philosophic difference in Newton's era vs Einstein's. Newton was honest in his writing essentially admitting defeat in solving how gravity could work instantaneously across space but nevertheless the math works. In contrast, today the physicists (and philosophers) claim not only does the math work but it proves that reality is fundamentally acausal, or probabilistic, etc. which are various forms of denying identity. In my view, the crude circularity at the root of physics (which leads to multiple conundrums) is the assumption that the "speed" of light can be measured when measurement presupposes light (or its E/M equivalents).[1] Light is special in this regards. [1] https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3104 https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3104
- goatlover 9y ago
  > not only does the math work but it proves that reality is fundamentally acausal, or probabilistic, etc. which are various forms of denying identity. Proves, as in all deterministic interpretations of QM are impossible? What about MWI? Also, the wavefunction itself is deterministic. Maybe reality isn't fundamentally particle-like, but field-like.
  - dmfdmf 9y ago
    > Maybe reality isn't fundamentally particle-like, but field-like. But then we get into metaphysical and epistemological questions which are obviously unavoidable once you start making claims about what is or is not "fundamental". This is because "fundamental" has to include both the nature of reality and our means of perceiving it. It is common today to project how we perceive onto what we perceive but they must be distinct in any valid theory. Claiming that reality itself is probabilistic is one example of this projection, though it may very well be a fundamental limit of our means of perception it is not a property of what we perceive.
cameldrv 9y ago
I have heard some physicist friends of mine speculate that perhaps space and time themselves are just statistical ensembles of entanglement. At the macro scale, we can measure distances and read clocks, but at the micro scale it’s like trying to measure the temperature of a single electron. Perhaps the definition of “close by” is just two states that are highly entangled. Since entanglement is contagious, this leads to clustering. It’s not clear why this would lead to 4 dimensional space time, and I’m not a physicist, but I thought it was an interesting idea.
chr1 9y ago
this is indeed a very interesting idea. http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2015/12/what-is-spacetime-really/ http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2015/12/what-is-spacetime-rea... was describing something similar several years ago.

cobbzilla 9y ago

Your idea reminds me of Wheeler's "single electron universe" [1]. I think you're on to something but I also think the next big step will involve a formal (re)definition of time as well as distance. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dbasedweeb 9y ago
When you think about particles as excitations of a field, the indistinguishable nature of said particles stops being such a puzzle.
- daxfohl 9y ago
  But the concept of a field itself was troubling to 18-19th century physicists. "So you put this (mass/charge/entanglement/whatever) here and automagically there's this whole force that extends across the universe in zero time? How? Why?" Philosophically I don't know if this question has ever been answered satisfactorily. But over the last 100 years fields have become so mathematically convenient that they're too hard not to use.
  - dbasedweeb 9y ago
    Well those 18th-19th century anything didn’t have a concept of entanglement or FTL, they were struggling with the notion that light, gravity, and other forces could propagate without a medium. They saw that waves could be transmitted through water, sound through air, and the idea that light or gravity could be transmitted through vacuum was baffling. Their resolution to the issue was to propose the existence of a substance which was invisible, intangible, but which permeated everything: the luminiferous ether. Light, in their understanding, wasn’t really moving through a vacuum, but this ever-present “stuff” instead. That started to fall out of favor long after the 18th century, and was finally conclusively shot down by Michelson and Morley with their interferometry. The problem Einstein and others grappled with was different, and concerned the fact that according to relativity nothing should exceed c. Entangled particles seemed to violate that principle, because the collapse to a given pair of states was instantaneous. The modern resolution to that is more practical than philosophical, and points out that information isn’t transmitted faster than light in entangled particles. Information propagates at or below c, even though at some scale entangled particles are statistically correlated. Relativity is only violated, and causality threatened if information is transmitted FTL, but entanglement doesn’t allow for that. You need a classical channel make entanglement work for communication, and that classical channel is going to be no faster than light. Without a classical channel, entanglement just gives you random noise.
    - goatlover 9y ago
      > Relativity is only violated, and causality threatened if information is transmitted FTL, but entanglement doesn’t allow for that. You need a classical channel make entanglement work for communication, and that classical channel is going to be no faster than light. Without a classical channel, entanglement just gives you random noise. But none of that answers the 18th-19th century Physicists question about how fields extend across the universe, or how light propagates in empty space. What the hell is a field anyway? Also, it doesn't explain how the expansion of space happens, what made inflation happen, and what dark energy is.
daxfohl 9y ago
Well if someone ever bothers to go through all the math this thing would entail, I think this would eventually come to some physically testable experiment. Whereas Wheeler's thing seems more pie in the sky.
bdamm 9y ago
Indeed, we seem to treat time like a passive component, a constantly ticking clock, where I wonder if time is distance, and it's time that's expanding our apparent distance. We measure distance in terms of time, or in terms of energy required to cross a given distance in a given time, and I can't shake the idea that energy required is exactly time, and distance itself is the meaningless measurement. It's energy required in 3D that's expanding. That doesn't mean space is expanding, only that energy required in 3D is expanding. And, obviously, I'm not a physicist. If I ever get a second chance at school, maybe physics.

coldtea 9y ago

>It was the issue that drove Newton nuts (that gravitation was, in Einstein's language "spooky action at a distance") Was Newton ever much concerned about this? He was into alchemy and magic, even spookier actions at a distance. Plus, by all they knew at the time, why would "action at a distance" feel strange?

daxfohl 9y ago
See Newton's quote here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_locality https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_locality
- DmenshunlAnlsis 9y ago
  This has very little to do with the modern issue of action at a distance vis a vis entanglement, and everything to do with the prevailing belief in an aether during Newton’s time. Einstein meanwhile, was actually commenting on entanglement physics.
  - daxfohl 9y ago
    Yeah I'm not trying to imply they're the same physical cause, just the same philosophical perception of ickiness. How to phrase better? Newton had issues with aether messing philosophically with local realism. Einstein fixed that through SR and then GR. But then QM introduced new problems with local realism, and maybe the next physics revolution is reconciling that problem. So, not the same thing, but perhaps two different sides of the same million-sided armchair-philosophical dice.
  - antonvs 9y ago
    But Einstein's objection was almost identical to Newton's. Newton wrote, "It is inconceivable that inanimate Matter should, without the Mediation of something else, which is not material, operate upon, and affect other matter without mutual Contact." Einstein wrote, "I cannot seriously believe in it because the theory cannot be reconciled with the idea that physics should represent a reality in time and space, free from spooky actions at a distance." Newton was talking about gravity, Einstein about entanglement. But the objection is essentially the same one. That's the reason that Newton's quote above is included in an article on the principle of locality.

kowdermeister 9y ago

> that gravitation was, in Einstein's language "spooky action at a distance" You are mistaking gravitation for quantum entanglement which Einstein used to describe as spooky action at a distance.

daxfohl 9y ago
No, that was intentional. They were both concerned with the lack of local realism delineated in the physics of their time, each of which occurred for different reasons (and the latter of which we still live with). Einstein just had a more memorable phrase for it. I can see how that was misleading though.
- jessriedel 9y ago
  The way you've written it is very misleading. > that gravitation was, in Einstein's language "spooky action at a distance" This definitely suggests you're claiming that Einstein was talking about gravity, regardless of the literal interpretation.
  - daxfohl 9y ago
    :%s/"in Einstein's language"/"as Einstein may have phrased it"/g
- DmenshunlAnlsis 9y ago
  The problem is that locality, realism and “spukhafte fernwirking” are all issues of quantum mechanics and not relativistic physics. You weren’t misleading, you were mistaken.
  - daxfohl 9y ago
    But in the 1800s they were issues of Newton's theory of gravitation.

renox 9y ago

With a true 'd = 0' for entangled particuls you could have faster than light communication no? But entanglement as far as we know now doesn't allow FTL communications.

daxfohl 9y ago
Kinda the opposite. If you redefine what "distance" means, that's explicitly how you's avoid FTL communication and eliminate the EPR paradox. Again though, I really am not an expert, or even more than armchair knowledgeable, on the subject.
jcoffland 9y ago
On their own, entangled particles do not allow information to be communicated.
- Flow 9y ago
  “Information to be communicated” or “information to be communicated faster than light” ?
  - jcoffland 9y ago
    neither

nol13 9y ago

Entangled particles just share the same ref, distance is a function of lookup complexity. This makes sense right? right?!?

gus_massa 9y ago

> I think the resolution of all this will again redefine "distance" to take resolutions involving quantum entanglement into account. Vaguely I picture some quantum relativity theory where from the perspective of an entangled particle it's still d=0 from its entangled partner and everything else is splitting apart. The problem with this idea is that entanglement is everywhere. The electrons inside a molecule can't be described individually, you must use the superposition of anisometric combinations of them, because only one combination is not enough. It's usually not called entanglement, but mathematically is the same phenomena. Every time two particles collide they get entangled. If they somehow collide or they split and the new particles collide you can see the entanglement as interference. If they go far away, it's difficult to measure the correlation, but it still there. Again, it's usually not called entanglement, but mathematically is the same phenomena. You have probably only read about cases where it's easy to characterize and isolate the superposition state of two particles that are far away. It's an interesting case because you can make some measurements and see that the classic description is wrong and prove that you must use the quantum description of the particles. But if you make any two particles, they will be entangled, just in a non easy to guess form, so they are not nice for experiments. Or if some of them collide with a third particle now you must consider the join state of the tree particles that is more difficult (there are some nice theoretical entanglement results with three particles, but I think nobody had measure them yet). If you see only two of the three entangled particles now the lack of some part of the information makes the result less clear, because you always must repeat the experiment many times and now you must take a weighted average of the possible states of the third particle you are not seeing. So if you are lucky you will see a smaller quantum effect, but if the state of the third particle is important enough you will see an average that is essentially equal to the classic result. And if they collide with more particles they all get in a superposition state that is equivalent of an entangled state, but it's very difficult od impossible to control it in an experiment. So when you see some part of them they look like a usual classical system. So after a few collisions all the particles are somewhat entangled, it's uncontrollable but mathematically there is no sharp criteria to distinguish the controllable states that are nice for entanglement experiments and the uncontrollable states where the decoherence make they look as classic system and everything in between. So if you say that two entangled particles have a distance d=0 then all the particles in the universe have d=0.

dmfdmf 9y ago

I agree. I think people miss your point that within their respective contexts Newton and Einstein were rejecting a form of an acausal theory. However, there is a significant philosophic difference in Newton's era vs Einstein's. Newton was honest in his writing essentially admitting defeat in solving how gravity could work instantaneously across space but nevertheless the math works. In contrast, today the physicists (and philosophers) claim not only does the math work but it proves that reality is fundamentally acausal, or probabilistic, etc. which are various forms of denying identity. In my view, the crude circularity at the root of physics (which leads to multiple conundrums) is the assumption that the "speed" of light can be measured when measurement presupposes light (or its E/M equivalents).[1] Light is special in this regards. [1] https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3104 https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3104

goatlover 9y ago
> not only does the math work but it proves that reality is fundamentally acausal, or probabilistic, etc. which are various forms of denying identity. Proves, as in all deterministic interpretations of QM are impossible? What about MWI? Also, the wavefunction itself is deterministic. Maybe reality isn't fundamentally particle-like, but field-like.
- dmfdmf 9y ago
  > Maybe reality isn't fundamentally particle-like, but field-like. But then we get into metaphysical and epistemological questions which are obviously unavoidable once you start making claims about what is or is not "fundamental". This is because "fundamental" has to include both the nature of reality and our means of perceiving it. It is common today to project how we perceive onto what we perceive but they must be distinct in any valid theory. Claiming that reality itself is probabilistic is one example of this projection, though it may very well be a fundamental limit of our means of perception it is not a property of what we perceive.

cameldrv 9y ago

I have heard some physicist friends of mine speculate that perhaps space and time themselves are just statistical ensembles of entanglement. At the macro scale, we can measure distances and read clocks, but at the micro scale it’s like trying to measure the temperature of a single electron. Perhaps the definition of “close by” is just two states that are highly entangled. Since entanglement is contagious, this leads to clustering. It’s not clear why this would lead to 4 dimensional space time, and I’m not a physicist, but I thought it was an interesting idea.

chr1 9y ago

this is indeed a very interesting idea. http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2015/12/what-is-spacetime-really/ http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2015/12/what-is-spacetime-rea... was describing something similar several years ago.