3 ms·
I agree with you. And further more, wouldn't entanglement itself be some sort of evidence that the particle does have an internal state even before being observ
by hasenj 14y ago
I agree with you. And further more, wouldn't entanglement itself be some sort of evidence that the particle does have an internal state even before being observed?
For instance, I could phrase things like this:
- Let particles A and B get into an entangled state
- Measure the state of particle A, see that it has property k.
- Predict that B has property ~k even though it's not being measured yet.
- Measure B. If B has property ~k, then we've proven that B had an internal state before we performed the measurement.
From all the "popular" description of "quantum entanglement", I don't see anything in it that's significantly different from things like, say, the preservation of momentum in Newtonian physics.
Of course, I must be missing something, but I don't know what is that thing yet.
- Osmium 14y ago"If B has property ~k, then we've proven that B had an internal state before we performed the measurement." This part is the flaw in the logic. That doesn't prove that B has an internal state. All it proves is that, in some sense, B's state is related to A (assuming you repeat the experiment until you reach statistical significance). Entanglement is nothing more than saying one particle is connected, in some sense, to another. Like a see-saw: if one side goes up, the other must go down. It's only "confusing" in the sense that the particles are physically separated, and the link between them is not mediated by a force as we understand it. Instead, they're linked by their very nature. It's almost as if you have just one particle, that's somehow been split into two and spatially separated. That's the conceptually difficult part.
- hasenj 14y agoWhy not choose the mundane and least astonishing explanation? If an object A is moving (with a known momentum) and hits a stationary object B, we can measure the momentum of either A or B and instantly know the momentum of the other object without having to measure it. The two objects are somehow "connected"; their state (momentum) is "entangled". Why is quantum entanglement different?
- Osmium 14y agoBecause that momentum transfer is mediated by a fundamental force, typically the electromagnetic force. Entanglement is a property of the particle, and is not mediated by a force: the collapse of the wavefunction of one particle doesn't /cause/ the collapse of the other, rather they both collapse simultaneously.
- kybernetikos 14y agoBecause we can measure a difference empirically http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem#Practical_experiments_testing_Bell.27s_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem#Practical_expe...